David Nirenberg Awarded 2026 Balzan Prize
David Nirenberg, the Institute for Advanced Study’s Director and Leon Levy Professor, has been awarded a 2026 Balzan Prize, recognizing his work in the field of Jewish Studies. Conferred by the International Balzan Foundation, the award celebrates groundbreaking scholarship that contributes “to the understanding of our world and our time” and promotes “the advancement of knowledge without borders.”
The Balzan Foundation selects four prize recipients annually—two in the physical and natural sciences, and two in the humanities—focusing on research defined by its relevance, rigor, and capacity to address the complex problems facing society. In honoring Nirenberg, the Foundation recognizes a career devoted to unraveling how religious communities interact, coexist, and construct their worldviews across millennia.
Nirenberg was cited for “his ground-breaking scholarship and contributions on Judaism, anti-Judaism, and the dynamics of the relationship between Jews, Christians, and Muslims; for his meticulous research, theoretical insights on the fundamental interdependence of violence and tolerance, rigorous historical analyses, and command of a wide range of sources in multiple languages and spanning multiple disciplines; and for profoundly advancing our understanding of not only ancient, but also contemporary questions.”
Nirenberg’s research illuminates the long history of ideas, with the history of Judaism as a focal point. His books—including Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (1996) and Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (2014), explore the ways in which these three faiths took shape by thinking about, and sometimes living among, each other. In Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013), he argued that foundational categories of Western thought have been shaped by imagining the overcoming of Judaism. His 2021 work Uncountable: A Philosophical History of Number and Humanity from Antiquity to the Present, co-authored with his father Ricardo Nirenberg, explored how numbers came to dominate claims to knowledge, and asked what we gain and what we lose when we treat everything as countable.
This expansive, boundary-crossing approach aligns with the ethos of the Balzan Prize, which is, “based on the conviction that only meaningful exchanges between different fields of knowledge and research can enable us to tackle the complex problems facing nature and society.”
Since its inception in 1961, a number of IAS Faculty and Members, present and past, representing a variety of disciplines, have received the prize. This includes Enrico Bombieri and Pierre Deligne, Professors Emeriti in the School of Mathematics, who were recipients in 1980 and 2004, respectively. Frequent Member Otto Neugebauer, who transitioned from the School of Mathematics to the Schools of Historical Studies and Natural Sciences, received the prize in 1986. Armand Borel, Professor (1957–2003) in the School of Mathematics, and John Elliot, Professor (1973–90) in the School of Historical Studies, were likewise bestowed this honor. Among the Institute’s Trustees, the Balzan Prize has been awarded to Martin Rees, Trustee Emeritus and frequent Member, and Lorraine Daston, who served on the Board from 2016–21.
Read more about the 2026 Balzan Prizes on the International Balzan Foundation website.
